September 15, 2025 • 50 mins
This is the second episode of our Guadalcanal series with historian and author Dave Holland.
Shoestring invasion planning
Koro rehearsals fiasco
Risking the aircraft carriers vs time to unload the convoy
Crutchley’s covering cruisers
Rupertus leads Tulagi
Blue Beach landing
Fighting at “the Cut”
Improvised cave tactics
Gavutu–Tanambogo battles
Tanks combat
Dave is an ex-Marine and was posted to Guadalcananal with the Australian Federal Police. He regularly leads battlefield study tours through the area. He is a world-leading expert on the battles of Guadalcanal and author of Guadalcanal's Longest Fight - The Pivotal Battles of the Matanikau Front.
Check out the show notes for this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
How did the United States commence their first land offensive, littoral maneuver, no less, in the Second World War.
We look at US Marines on Tulagi 1942, the forgotten first US offensive of the Second World War.
This is the Principles of War podcast, professional military education for junior officers and senior NCOs.
(00:28):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast.
Very excited to have Dave Holland back with us.
Today we are continuing our Guadalcanal Campaign series.
Dave is a battlefield guide with extensive experience around Guadalcanal.
He's got encyclopedic knowledge of the Guadalcanal land campaign and he is the author of Guadalcanal's Longest Fight.
(00:53):
Today we're talking about Tulagi, Tanambogo and Gavutu Islands.
Let's get back to the discussion.
The Marines first combat landing of the Second World War.
Welcome back to the podcast, Dave.
Thanks, James.
It's great to be back and I'm ready for episode two.
So now we're actually getting into some fighting, so.
(01:13):
Absolutely.
So we're going to look at Tulagi.
The Marines left Wellington on 22 July 1942.
That's the same day as the Japanese landing at Buna and Gona.
The task force was to conduct landings on five islands, Florida, Gavutu, Tanambogo, Tulagi and Guadalcanal.
How well prepared were they when they left Wellington?
(01:37):
Okay, I think it goes back to the last episode when I was talking about the, I guess composition and the training and the experience or non experience of the division.
I think I said in the last episode they're fairly green factor.
I'd say 70%, 80% of the division was very green.
And so their planning was three to four weeks or I think extended out to at least the seventh.
(01:57):
From the first they got a reprieve for another week.
King gave them another week for the seventh.
So the plan was only five weeks.
So Operation Watch Time became Operation Shoestring, which was the joke at the time.
It was a shoestring invasion.
So I guess as you could say in five weeks, launching the largest US amphibious assault in their history.
(02:19):
At that stage it's probably the best they could be within five weeks training and five week preparation.
So they weren't that well prepared.
But they had to do what they had to do, had to make the best of a bad situation.
Luckily, I think I spoke about in the last episode, they had some good quality officers and some good NCOs, and they had a high quality of the green recruits.
(02:39):
I think I said too also that of these recruits, one also said they're all officer.
If they were in peacetime, they'd be officer caliber because of volunteers.
And these are the bunch that came straight out of the Pearl Harbors.
They're very well motivated.
They were keen to take on the Japanese and they're very motivated and dedicated, so to speak.
Ready to go.
Now on the way to Guadalcanal, they stopped at Coro island in Fiji for two rehearsal landings.
(03:05):
How did they go?
Well, think it's kind of common knowledge.
That was a fiasco, a complete fiasco.
That was what Lt. Col. Merrill Trining, one of the Division Klan officers, said it was a complete fiasco.
But in a lot of books and a lot of accounts they just write it off as nothing was learned.
But there was some valuable lessons learned from this.
I guess some of the things that they dubbed it to be a complete fiasco.
(03:29):
The reasons were law.
The boats were hung up on the coral.
So Cairo is about 400 miles south of Fiji.
That was the rendezvous place.
And there was also the rendezvous for, or the meeting place for the whole fleet.
So you had Admiral Fletcher and Admiral Kerner and the transport units.
He had them all meeting at one stage.
This is the first time that the three elements were meeting all together so that it was also a chance to do rehearsals.
(03:54):
Also a chance to have the actual first conference with the tactical commander, which is Admiral Fletcher at the time.
So we'll talk about that in a second.
But when they actually did the dress rehearsals, a lot of the boats were hung up on coral.
They landed like one or 200 yards off.
They swamped a lot of boats, ran into their own beaches, landed on their own beaches.
(04:14):
Some of the guys going down the ladders and the ropes got hung up.
Equipment fell in the ocean.
Yeah, it was a complete fiasco.
But things they, I guess cons, you could say it was the first time for a lot of the smaller units that have meetings.
So they coordinated a lot of stuff.
Some of the air and the naval coordinated the timings with the firing and how they work together.
(04:38):
The boat timings were worked out.
It allowed them a chance to repack and continue packing some of their gear.
Because as you know, we discussed in last episode, when they landed in New Zealand under Operation Longville for the six month deployment there, they're all admin packed in the cargo ships.
So they had to do a rush repack the best they could to combat load those ships.
(05:01):
So it gave him a chance to continue that combat loading.
So there was some lessons learned from it and some good things from it.
But overall it didn't fill them with optimism.
Now the conference was on the 26th of July.
So that was Fletcher.
He was meeting with Turner who was the amphibious force commander.
Vander Griff was Division 1st Marine Division Commander and a guy called Admiral Rear Admiral Callahan.
(05:23):
So he was the chief of staff for Re or Vice Admiral Gormley.
It was a South Pacific commander.
Interestingly Gormley didn't attend.
He was still back in this stage.
I think he'd moved his headquarters to New Caledonia I think at that stage, or potentially New Zealand.
But it was one of those two PR I think it far deployed to New Caledonia.
But he wasn't there.
(05:44):
So Fletcher wasn't really convinced about the invasion.
He what Vandergriff said that Fletcher had the he was opinion that Fletcher thought of it more of a raid, amphibious raid, in and out, not of we're going to go there and stay.
Obviously he had three carriers and he was very protective of his carriers.
So the debate was how long was the air cover going to remain to unload the transports and cargo ships.
(06:08):
So it's a big controversy even today.
So Fletcher says I'll give you D plus one.
So D day, landing day plus one.
So two days of air coverage.
Then I'm out of there.
Because he didn't want to keep his carriers on station in a stationary position because they're susceptible to especially land based bombers and he wanted to keep them on the move.
(06:28):
So Turner and Vande Griff wasn't keen or wasn't happy with that idea.
They said was no way they were spent at least four to five days to unload those cargoes and transports.
I mean download a transport ship's not you got men on it, you can unload them quite quickly but all the cargo is going to take a number of days.
So they said look, four to five days.
Fletcher goes and went back and forth.
Finally Fletcher said okay, I'll give you D plus two.
(06:50):
So three days and that's it, I'm out of there on the 9th of August.
I'm out of there now.
Callahan, who is supposed to be Gormley's representative, didn't say a word.
He might, he was just kind of acting as the scribe.
He wrote notes down.
So if Gormley would have been there, at least he would have been, I guess the person who could mediate it and made the final decision.
But he wasn't there.
(07:10):
And that's a big controversy.
And so they left the conference.
Vandergrift and Turner wasn't too happy because they said, we only got three days.
Fletcher wasn't really happy because I don't think he really wanted to command the expedition to start with.
So what Turner had come up with, he said, this is our plan.
It's going to take us at least four to five days to unload these cargo ships.
So.
So we have a covering force of cruisers, heavy cruisers, and some destroyers under a guy called Admiral Crutchley, who was a British admiral, actually.
(07:38):
Victoria Cross, had been awarded a Victoria Cross, I think, in the First World War.
So he was on loan to the Australian Navy he commanded.
His flagship was the hmas.
I said HMS once and someone.
Someone basically flogged me on the.
On the podcast I was on or I think on Facebook, HMAs get my accent right.
(07:59):
Australia and also the Camber there.
And I think there was a cruiser I can't think off top of my head, you might know it, but there was three Australian ships involved.
So they're part of the covering force.
And what they were going to do is he was going to use those covering force of heavy cruisers and some destroyer pickets, and then they were going to provide protection to the cargo ships get offloaded.
(08:19):
This becomes very important a bit later on when we get to talk about the Battle of Sabo Island.
This really comes into.
Into very important there.
So, yeah, so that was the plan.
And after that, they proceeded on to do the invasion.
And at this stage, most of the Marines didn't know they were going to invade Guadalcanal.
I think it was actually right before Coral or at Coro that most of the Marines were just learned, okay, invasion is Guadalcanal.
(08:45):
Even though there's.
You read some accounts or hear some accounts that it was already known.
But generally when you read most of the, I think the enlisted men in the private soldiers accounts or Marines accounts, they didn't know where they were going.
They just knew they were going into combat.
In fact, the COVID story.
No, I'll take it back.
The COVID story the division came up with the troops was, oh, we're packing very quickly.
(09:08):
We're going to go do some exercises and some training.
But some of the old NCOs and some of the officers started realizing when the live ammunition started coming out, yeah, we're not going to do training, we're going into combat somewhere.
So that was the coverage story when they left.
So after the Koro was finished conference, when they started heading basically north the word got out.
(09:30):
Maps, well, not maps, rudimentary maps and have good maps came out.
We're going everybody canal.
And it started working out the plans.
So leading the landing at Tulagi was Brigadier General William Rupertis.
And he's second in command under Major General Alexander Vandegrift.
What was Rupertus like?
Yeah, so sir Pertus, sometimes Rupertus was man Rupertus.
(09:52):
So Mariam Rupertus was a career Marine.
Initially he came in.
I think it was a Revenue service.
But what's modern called Modern today the Coast Guard and for medical Regency.
He didn't make it to academy, so he received a commission in Marine Corps.
So he was an excellent marksman, competition shooter.
He actually, he was the author the.
(10:13):
The Marines.
Well, all Marines know it's called the Roffman's Creed.
There are many rifles, but this one was mine.
And we.
Well, Marines still say it to this day in boot camp.
But yeah, he was.
He was known as a.
A great staff officer.
Very smart fellow.
I think he graduated number one in his class.
He'd served in a quote, banana wars, but I think he's more administrative.
Top roles in Haiti.
(10:35):
And then he.
He served in the China.
It was a part of China Marines commander battalion in the 4th Marines, which is 4th Marine Regiment in China.
So he was 37, 38.
Around that time he had an opportunity to observe the Chinese because as you know, they were.
That was when the Sino Japanese war was kicking off for the second time.
So he was in Shanghai.
(10:56):
He got to observe.
I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, I think they were.
But anyway, he got to observe the.
These future enemies and how they fall.
So he was the.
The visions Assistant division commander.
So he was friends with Vandergrift, the division commander.
And he later became very controversial because he was the first Marine division commander to Bala Peleli.
(11:17):
And that's where he.
There's a lot of controversy around that battle and he was the division commander there.
So a lot of controversy follows Robertus.
In my opinion.
Robertus was a great staff officer.
He wasn't really known to be a frontline combat officer, say like a Puller or Edson or even a Vandergriff.
He wasn't very personable.
He didn't like to visit the guys on the.
On the lines and things like that.
(11:39):
But I think his.
He's shown in his planning and his staff officer capability.
He's very smart planner.
So in this.
In this battle, I think we'll get to it a bit later.
But they divided the forces in the into two forces, one under reporters and one under Vandergriel.
So Vandergrift had task force X ray and they went to Guadalcanal and repertoires had task force Yoke X Y and they speared north to go to Tulagi and the surrounding islands.
(12:09):
So it was basically two separate battles unsupported, fought at the same time.
So what's the terrain like in Tulagi?
Well see Tulagi was the, was the British pre war colonial capital.
So the Bruce Solomon Islands I think from 1896 was a British protectorate.
So they administered and ran the whole Solomon Islands.
(12:31):
So they established their headquarters on Tulagi.
Now the reason they did that tag is nice little island.
It's basically free from some of the tropical diseases and away from the mainlands and the swamps and things like that.
It's a good place to establish.
Plus Tulagi harbor is one of the best deep water ports I've been told in the Pacific, but definitely in the South Pacific.
So it's a very strategic area.
(12:52):
So Tulagi is about 4,000 yards long, roughly about a thousand yards wide.
During the time of the battle most of it had been cleared because the British had established their headquarters there.
It's what you would think of a pre war British outpost.
It had a cricket oval, cricket pitch, had a nine hole golf course.
(13:13):
It had a giant country club, nice neat line streets with colonial administration buildings, had a prison, had a hospital.
So it's very well maintained area.
And most of the vegetation had been cut loose.
On the northern bit there's a mango swamp and that was probably the thickest part.
Running down the island was a, or still is.
(13:35):
What I keep saying was I was only there three weeks ago is a, a mountainous spine.
I won't say mountains, a hills, hill spine.
So the highest peak it ends at the northern or sorry the southern bit of the island on a hill called 281.
So it's 281ft.
That's what they designated as.
So that was where the highest point was 281.
But that's Hill spine ran the whole length toward the southern bit.
(13:58):
The British had cut a path about a normal road width through the ridge.
So they're allowed to one side to go from the government buildings to the living quarters.
So they call it the cut which when the battle of Tulagi comes of importance.
So that's what Tulagi was.
It was actually a very nice area.
(14:18):
It still is but it was super nice in 1942.
Yeah.
It's unusual being in the Solomons and seeing a cricket ground.
Yeah.
Cricket pitch.
Yes.
Yeah.
I've got Martin Clemens, who was the famous coast watcher.
I've got a photo from his private album and it shows.
It shows a Creek pitch in 1938 and looks just like you're in Australia somewhere.
(14:38):
And they.
I think when you were there, you've seen the actual.
The cricket pitch.
For American listeners, that's like at the.
The concrete long.
Are you explaining, James, what.
How would you explain a cricket pitch?
What is that?
It's the.
The oval is an oval shape.
That's the playing ground where you play the cricket.
And there's a pitch where the bowling and the batting happens.
So that's where most of the action occurs.
(15:00):
And so if someone bowls a ball and the batsman at the other end tries to hit it as far and as fast as he can, and then they.
In between the wickets.
How long do you think a pitch is?
10, 15 meters?
I think.
Not sure.
But, yeah, it's not a huge distance.
Yeah.
And this one was made of concrete.
It's still there, as you know.
Anyway, that's.
That's all we got.
(15:20):
Tulagi Loop so the first landing of the Guadalcanal campaign, and so this is the commencement of US land offensive for the Second World War, was at Tulagi.
How did that landing go?
Actually, it was at Hale, which is a few hundred yards from Tulagi.
That's one of the things.
And a lot of people forget or don't even realize the 2nd Marines.
(15:41):
So when I say 2nd Marines and the Marines, Marine Corps, they say they pronounce their regiments by Marines, like 1st Marines, 2nd Marines, 3rd Marines.
That means regiment.
So they want to say Division is 1st Marine Division.
Sometimes that's confusing to people.
So the 2nd Marines was part of Task Force Yoke, and they were going to be a reserve force only because Turner had wanted to use them reserved.
(16:04):
And after the landings, he was going to take the whole regiment and send them to a place called Nandini, which is in Santa Cruz Island.
So that's between Espirito Santos and Guadalcanal.
They were going to grab Nadini.
So N D E N I N D. So that was the idea.
So I think we discussed on last episode how the 7th Marines, which is one of the third rifle regiments of the division, had been earmarked and sent previously in March.
(16:29):
Sorry, yeah.
In April.
Sorry, April.
May, in 42.
To Samoa.
So they're garrisoned Samoa.
So it left Vandergrift without a rifle regiment.
So he was down to two rifle regiments.
So the second Marines was on loan temporarily for this initial invasion.
Then they were going to shoot off in Benning.
So part of their job, B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, was the land to the west of Tulagi, about 500 yards in the Florida Islands, because Tulagi's you're only separated for like 4 or 500 yards from the Florida Islands, which is a large island group.
(17:03):
But on the tip overlooking the beach that the Marines were going to land on Tulagi was a small village called Haleta.
So they thought, well, if there's any Japanese Hale to they could pour enfilading fire straight on Blue beach, which is at Stilagi landed beach.
Therefore, 20 minutes earlier, we're going to land a company of marines on Haleta to secure that village to ensure the protect the left flank of the.
(17:28):
The raiders landed on Tulagi.
So at 0740 or 7.40am on the morning of the 7th of August, B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and a Captain Crane landed.
They were the first troops to land.
Now let's put an Australian spin on this.
I think I mentioned in a previous episode that when Lieutenant Colonel later Colonel G, the division intelligence officer, went to Australia, he spoke to a number of former planters and what colonial officials and things like that.
(17:57):
It lived there.
So he gathered intel.
So he incorporated about, I think eight or 12 of these as gods.
So one of the guides was a guy called always get this wrong.
Pilot officer, flying Officer.
I think it's flying officer.
I get my raw Australian ranks wrong sometimes.
Anyway, it just says Flying Officer C. Spencer.
Now, Spencer led those guys because Spencer lived on Tulagi for a number of years, so he knew there quite well.
(18:21):
So he led that those guys in.
Now, the first man to put his foot on the soil was an Australian, Spencer.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So I've got Spencer's unpublished memoirs.
Oh, sorry.
It was published in the Sydney papers, I think in the 40s and 50s.
But it needs to be a book.
But hopefully one day it will turn into a book.
It was into Australian War Memorial.
(18:41):
So, yeah, he was the first ones to land an Australian.
So they landed there unopposed, no one there.
They jumped back in the boats and headed back.
So they were the first troops to land the second Marines in the Guadalcanal campaign.
Now, 8 o', clock, the first Marine Raiders were picked to land.
They landed at Blue Beach.
Now, you may give you the reason why they landed At Blue Beach.
(19:05):
Yeah.
So they were looking for somewhere that was unopposed.
And their intelligence suggested that they would be more towards the southeast part of the island.
So they were looking for somewhere where they could.
And I think there was also a consideration around the amount of coral as well.
Yeah.
So Vanderger, his whole idea, he says, look, because of the plan and everything, he wanted to try to get a one up on the.
(19:27):
The Japanese because this was the first amphibious landing American had done since the Spanish American war in the late 8 or 1898.
So it was.
They said, we're going to hit them where they.
They don't expect us.
So in Tulagi, like you said, the southeast and southwest parts, the main landing beaches to the Japanese had.
Had put their defenses on the southern part of the island based around Hill 281.
(19:49):
So the planners pointed to this beach and they spoke to one of the former, the Australians who formerly lived there.
And they said, what about this beach?
Can we land there?
The Australian says, if you don't care about your boats, yeah, you can land there.
Because of the coral.
Vinegar says, yeah, we don't care about our boats.
Well, we don't.
We want to land where they don't expect us to be.
So, yeah, true to what the Australian said, when the Marines went in first rate of battalion, the boats grounded on a coral.
(20:16):
It didn't smash the boats up, it just grounded.
Most of them grounded on the coral about 100 yards off, but luckily for them is unopposed.
And they jumped out of the boats and waited ashore and they landed without a shot being fired.
They quickly started spreading out over the island.
I guess.
I think the really interesting thing with this is despite all of the difficulties in conducting amphibious operations, the one thing that you've got in your favor is the flexibility to choose the landing site.
(20:44):
And that's why, because amphibious operations tend to be quite successful initially in.
In making that landing.
Obviously there's examples like Dieppe which weren't successful, but it's the importance of the intelligence and to be able to land where the enemy isn't because it's difficult to, you know, depending on the.
(21:05):
On the objective, they had quite a few places where they could have landed.
Yeah.
And what they're expected to land.
And now think.
I don't know if I mentioned the last episode.
Vandergrift wanted to send the first Marine raiders in previously prior to do a reconnaissance and feverish reconnaissance.
Once again, this is the first invasion and the Navy planners hadn't that.
I think Twinning said They're still operating on 1907 blue book manual which is this is how we fought 1907.
(21:32):
And they said no, it's too dangerous to send recon in beforehand.
And I think I mentioned too that he wanted to do a not landing.
They go no, it's too dangerous.
They were more aware about their boats.
But yeah, they hit them where they're not.
And that was a good planning technique.
That was part of their tentative 1934 tentative landing manual is to use the intelligence and try to hit them whether or not or do amphibious fates to do demonstrations to pull them in.
(21:56):
And we'll see that a bit later in a campaign.
So what naval gunfire and air support did the troops have as they went ashore?
Okay, so there were three carriers like I mentioned before under Fletcher.
I think they were about 250 almost said yards.
Geez, that was a bit of a mess.
250 miles southeast.
So they provided all the CAS support or the close air support.
(22:19):
And then the naval support came from one cruiser which is a San Juan.
If you know about the cruisers they're calling the anti aircraft cruisers or the machine gun cruisers on plane but it's the USS San Juan which is a cruiser and two destroyers was the Monson and the Buchanan.
So they had three ships for close naval gunfire support.
(22:41):
Now the air strikes came initially early in the morning preceding the invasion.
There's some great photos out there of the taken on the day and it shows them striking Gavutu, Cano, Tulagi.
Some great photos from air shots.
It shows fires burning and docks burning and it screws some right good footage.
(23:06):
Now the Japanese on Tanabogo had a float plane bases.
We discussed last episode.
It differates you speak to some accounts have 12 other accounts have 15 float planes and the Japanese hadn't had flew the reconnaissance place.
And that was a kind of a benefit for the Americans because they came in under cover of weather that's allowed them to approach undetected because it the weather I think for the last two days had been pretty bad.
(23:32):
So allowed them to come in darkness around 2 something in or 2:30 in the morning.
They they came in and broke up into two separate X ray and yoke.
But the Japanese hadn't been flying any reconnaissance planes.
So early that morning.
I think that the weather had cleared and they were like revving their planes up and getting them ready to go.
And out of the sky come the Wildcats and shot them up and destroyed most of them I think destroyed all of them.
(23:59):
To this day, you can, I think you can dive two or three off Tulagi.
It's a great diving spot.
People dive on those things.
So it wiped out their air power off the bat on these strikes.
So they're very effective from the very beginning.
So how did the fight for Tulagi go?
Well, initially, when, like I said, when the marines landed.
So the first rate of Battalion went in first, followed by the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Rooms under Lt. Col. Rosecrans, now Vandegrift, because he expected a tough fight in Tulagi and the surrounding islands.
(24:27):
I say the surrounding islands up in Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanabogo.
So they picked the best units.
So first rated battalion, first Parachute battalion, second Battalion, fifth Marines.
So they're one of the best units ahead.
Infantry battalions.
So there were the three battalions or regimental sides they were going to hit with the 2nd Marines in reserve to assist.
(24:48):
So when the first raiders hit, their job was to land and turn to the right, which is south, and spread out over the island.
So 2 5.
When I say 25 at second time, 5th Marines came in behind them.
And then they turned left to clear out the northern end of the island.
So raiders come in, they spread out and they started moving down the island.
It brought one company one coast, the other company another coast, and two companies on that spine, that ridge spawn.
(25:14):
So they're moving down.
25 came in, turn left, cleared the left, the top of the island under no resistance.
Maybe a few sniper shots or rifle shots they call it, they said.
And then it wasn't until around midday that the marines started, got the first resistance because the Japanese had built all their resistance on round 281, which is on the far south in the island.
(25:36):
So the village called Sepia, there were a few, I think it was one machine gun, a few rifles there.
B Company got into a little bit of a brawl with.
But they managed to push through them quite quickly.
But C Company, they passed the hill called 201.
Now, 201 was the home of the police superintendent and the police barracks, they've been long gone.
(25:56):
They evacuated long before that.
So the Japanese had a couple machine gun posts up there, and that's a barbed wire over the road.
So C Company, under a guy called Major Ken Bailey, pushed past Hill 201.
And they started receiving fire from the rear.
So they had to.
They were pinned down for a short time and then had the assault and take those two machine gun posts out.
(26:21):
Now Bailey in the process of taking him out, the company commander, he's up one of the bunkers pulling sandbags out.
They're trying to throw grenades in this thing.
He got shot in the thigh, but he continued on.
And Bailey's gonna, we're going to speak about Bailey later in the campaign, but.
And then he was wounded and he was sent back to New Caledonia to hospital.
And there he gave talks to the army there.
(26:43):
But yeah, just keep Ken Bailey in your back of your mind because he later.
But he was, I think he's like six foot three, bigger than life, a very aggressive commander now.
I loved him.
So anyway, they continued on after that resistance.
They made it almost to the, it was getting dark.
Then they made it to the cricket oval and they made it to the cut when I mentioned earlier, the cut which is, which ran through the line, the thing that was their objective line.
(27:08):
As you know, mainly objective lines are based on geographical features so people can easily recognize it.
I mean not everyone's been carrying a map with a little line on it and they go, the objective line is this stream or this ridge or into the ridge or whatever.
So they reach the objective line by the evening.
So what they're planning on doing was going to dig in, establish a strong perimeter.
(27:29):
Then next day they were going to clear out the rest of the island.
So that's where they were on the night of the 7th and the 8th.
So the Japanese, you had roughly about 3 to 350, depends on which account you read of Japanese there.
And there was Special Naval Landing Force, this from the third Korea.
Special Naval Landing Force at that stage, I think they've been redesignated the 81st or in the 84th guard unit.
(27:54):
But they were Japanese Naval infantry.
You know, contrary to what you read, they weren't the most elite.
They weren't Japanese Marines as, like the US Marines, Royal Marines were known as.
They weren't as well trained as Imperial Japanese army.
But they just have this mystique about them that they're they were the best.
Mostly late Japanese.
They were well trained, don't get me wrong and Bitch is a reservist un.
(28:16):
I think the average age is in the 30s and 35 for these guys.
I mean there's a great photo, it shows the third courier and their NCOs and officers and they look some pretty well competent and well determined men.
But anyway, they were no business the surrender and they were fighting quite hard.
So that night they launched five.
I don't like to use Bonsai attacks.
It wasn't bonsai.
(28:36):
They're mainly the part of their Japanese doctrine for infiltration.
So five assaults against the Marines that cut one of the platoons of C Company off at the most of the attacks were beaten back quite easily.
They lost a lot of the guys.
So the next day, 2, 5 it came in and the plan was to reduce the Japanese.
At this stage they were in a pocket on 281.
(28:59):
So they had some hills and sorry, they had some caves and some sandbag positions at the bottom of the cricket oval and the cricket pitch, that area.
I think a lot of these caves wasn't machine gun made, machine gun bunkers because they didn't really expect an invasion from my reading.
And just my theory is I think a lot of these were air race shelters dug into the hill and they just threw sandbags or rocks and use them as barriers and they just became instant bunkers, machine gun bunkers.
(29:29):
So the fight was on for there and that had to get these guys out of this little ravine.
Now this is the days before they had Marines had bazookas or flamethrowers and they had to use a lot of emperor improvisation.
They adapted.
One of the ways they adapted was they were using the TNT charges, central charges and TNT blocks of tnt.
(29:49):
Then we're tying them onto ropes.
They would like get above the Japanese and just swing the TNT block over the entrance and try to blast them that way.
They're putting them on plywood, pieces of like plywood with long sticks or and just blast them in like that way.
Some of them are actually putting on ropes.
Like one of the famous gunnery sergeant who's a demolition specialist, Angus Goss, he was doing a rope.
(30:13):
He just, I wouldn't say ab sale when those absent in those days just put a rope around your waist and go down the thing.
And he was throwing demolition charges in.
At one stage in the cut, there was a small Japanese hole there with air raised shelter and it's roughly about 30, 40 Japanese in there and had a machine gun and a sandbag.
You can imagine both sides, the cuts.
The Marines were on both ends trying to fire and you know you had crossfire and they couldn't get into that cut.
(30:38):
So one of the Marines come up with a solution.
He says, he said there's a 50 gallon gasoline drums down by the government dock.
So they wrote a couple of those 50 gallon or 44 liters talking Australian up to the top and they poured the fuel down and they burned the Japanese out.
And then when they ran out, they'd shoot them that way.
So we use a lot of improvised techniques to make it happen.
(30:59):
So by the end of the second day, which is the eighth most resistance was completed and the island was secured, even though a number of days later they had stragglers or snipers still in caves that they were trying to clean up.
But being the second day on Tulagi, the island was secured by Repertos, declared secured.
They actually tried to bring two tanks in at one stage because the 2nd Marines had a company of tanks with them.
(31:24):
The 2nd Marine Battalions.
These are the M3 tanks.
This is on Tulagi now.
And they brought two in to assist, but one had mechanical breakdown and the other one got stuck or bogged, so they wasn't involved.
Then we talk about 10 and Bogo, they had two tanks and they were involved.
And we'll talk about that in a minute.
So, yeah, that was the fight on Tulagi.
Now all the Japanese were killed except for three.
(31:47):
And about.
Well, not about 45 marines were killed fighting for that island.
So this is the first time that the Americans or their allies that seen the Japanese fight defensively in caves and bunkers, and they knew we had to kill every one of them.
That's why they said we had to kill every one of them to get them out.
We had to go in there and kill them to get them out.
(32:09):
This was the first real encounter of the Japanese in the defensive that was going to be seen throughout the Pacific.
This is.
Is the first time that we're coming face to face with these heavy encounters.
The Japanese are pride themselves on offensive doctrine, but they ended up to be defensive geniuses.
One of the things that I find really interesting is despite this being the first amphibious operation for the Marines of the war, they've got their tanks available to them.
(32:36):
So probably a much more advanced concept of combined arms straight out of the box than we've seen with some of the other armies trying to fight in the jungle.
Yeah, well, it goes back to that tentative landing doctrine I was discussing on the last episode.
And tanks were in the.
(32:56):
Just infancy with the infantry and, and learning the tank infantry tactics.
The Marines hadn't worked it out.
We'll see.
We talk about Tannenbogo in the first tank attack were unsupported by infantry and what could go wrong there?
There was a lot to be learned, but yeah, they had them there and they had a whole tank battalion with the division of M3s and had some M2s too, which is the only Time they were used in combat, but they had M3 Stuarts and M2s, light tanks.
(33:23):
So while we've got the landing going on at Tulagi, we've also got operations going on with Gavutu and Tanambogo.
Do you want to sort of talk us through what those two islands are like and you what the terrain's like?
Okay, well, we'll talk about what they were like beforehand or what how they became known and why the Japanese landed there.
I think I mentioned to in the last episode how the Australians were there at Tananbogo.
(33:47):
Did we mention that I think had a seaplane base?
Yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
So the Australians had a seaplane base.
Japanese took it over.
So Tanambogo was the main seaplane base and the Gavutu was used also.
So pre war, Gavutu was the headquarters of the Lever Brothers.
And the Lever Brothers, the big coconut plantation.
I think they're still in business.
I don't know.
But they were the coconut plantations that own business, that owned all the coconut plantations in the area.
(34:11):
So that was their main headquarters on Tulagi.
Oh, sorry.
Gavutu.
So Gavutu was clear.
There was no jungle there.
Had buildings.
Had their big store at headquarter buildings.
It was nice and clear.
Coconut trees on it.
It was a nice place, too.
Had their loading docks, big concrete piers, docks.
(34:32):
The Japanese had a seaplane, had their seaplane docks there and seaplane establishments.
So Gavutu is small.
I mean, both of them are very small.
They're basically just juts of Carl popping up out of the ocean.
So Gavutu is about 500 to 600 yards long.
About 300, 250, 300 yards wide.
(34:52):
So depends on where you measure it from.
Has one hill on it.
That's Hill 148.
And that's right there.
Now, Gavuku is separated by Tanenbogo, they separated by caswell.
There's about 300 yards between both islands.
So pre war, what the Australians have done and the Lieber brothers have done, they put a causeway there.
(35:14):
The causeway is about a roadside size width, 300 yards long.
They could go from island to drive vehicles back and forth and move material.
So there's a causeway.
You could just walk from one island to the other, about 300 yards long.
So that was separated by that.
And the causeway is built over just a coral ledge.
So Tanenbogo was even tinier.
(35:36):
So it's about 250 yards by 250 yards.
It was clear too.
And it had warehouses on it and cranes and all this stuff that involved in a safeline bikes.
And it had a one, it had a small hill called one two one, so 121ft.
So these two hills going to be very prevalent when the Marines try to land there because both those hills can support each other.
(35:56):
So we're only talking thousand yards apart, if that.
800 yards apart, these two heels to get 148, 121 and they separated by 800 yards.
So that's what the terrain looked like.
Very open, very built up actually with buildings.
So the seaplane base was at Gavutu and Tanambogo.
Gavutu was assaulted by the US Marine 1st Parachute Battalion at 1200.
(36:21):
This was after the landings at Guadalcanal and Tulagi because there wasn't enough air cover to support three landings at once.
How did the Gavutu landings go?
Yeah, so I probably say it in one sentence, but it was the first by the Americans in World War II.
So go back to those two hills.
The Americans expected to be about 200 Japanese on those islands.
(36:42):
It was, their intelligence said it was 1500 Japanese on all the Tulagan shrine and islands.
They roughly said, look, it's roughly 200, 250 on Tananburga in Gavutu.
The Japanese on Tannenbogovutu consisted of the Yokohama Air Group, which is the float planes which you talk about, the pilots, the air crews, the aircraft maintenance staff and things like that.
(37:07):
And then you had the 14th construction unit, mainly Koreans, laborers and some Japanese engineers and some Japanese civilians were in there too.
You had one platoon of Colt fighters and that was a special Naval Land enforcement platoon from Tulagi.
The rest of them were just support personnel.
There were about 500 to 600 of them there on both those islands.
(37:28):
But what they had was they wouldn't expect a direct amphibious assault.
They didn't have bunkers set up and pillboxes and barbed wire.
What they did have was a lot of anti aircraft weapons, machine guns because that was what they expected to get hit by.
Because Americans had been doing raids.
There's B17, especially on Guadalcanal.
So 1st Parachute Battalion obviously was an elite unit of the Marine Corps is a bit of debate.
(37:53):
But in my opinion there are.
They're better trained and a higher caliber than the raiders.
The first parachute majority of them were pre war regulars, especially the NCOs and officers.
And they had the peak of the NCOs and officers.
He had a very good unit.
So obviously they Wouldn't coming in by playing on this one, they're coming in by amphibious assault.
They didn't expect much resistance on Gavutu.
(38:16):
So what Vandergriff had planned to do with Gavutu, they're going to land on Gavutu, secure it and then potentially because they had a whole battalion or.
Sorry, yeah, whole battalion of artillery from the 10th Marines which is attached to the 2nd Marines, they're going to land at least a battery of 75 millimeters there and provide support to Tulagi.
This is only 3,000 yards from Tulagi.
(38:37):
So Gavutu and Tanabogo is 3,000 yards east of Tulagi.
So they were going to use that to support.
They didn't expect much resistance.
So the pre landing bombardments, the Marines had planned to land a seaplane dock, but when the carrier planes came in, it blasted that seaplane dock, threw concrete everywhere.
So that was off.
(38:58):
Off the sharks or off the table.
So they had to land at a small beach about 100 yards wide, if that.
Not even 100 yards at 50 yards wide to the left of the dock.
And plus they had the land at a big concrete loading dock.
That was pre war lever brothers.
So the first boats came in, they automatically started taking fire from both of those hills, inflated heavy machine gun fire and guys were, you know, killed and wounded in their boats before they even got out.
(39:27):
There was one interesting point, you remember I said about the float planes, how the carrier planes come and suck all the float planes, one marina countless when they're heading in.
One of the float planes was still floating, is in paces and sitting on the wing.
They said it was a pilot.
So I don't know how they knew it was a pilot.
But it's Jeff definitely a Japanese there with his pistol out firing at him is, you know, all these Marine landing craft were coming in with all these, you know, hundreds of marines coming in.
(39:54):
This one Japanese just defiantly firing his pistol and he didn't last long because the guy on the.
One of the landing craft had the Lewis gun and he cut him down.
But just the defiance of that Japanese.
But anyway they came in, started getting hit and then they were almost getting pushed back.
So they managed to land a couple of machine guns.
They started throwing fire on 148 and they started had enough suppressing fire so they could land more guys on there.
(40:19):
They're taking heavy casualties.
The battalion commander was hit, wasn't killed, but he was mortar or knocked out, very seriously wounded.
They managed by the end of the day to take Hill 148 with a lot of casualties.
And then at the end of the day, Tannen Bogo was still in Japanese hands.
And when he was getting dusk, they made a decision that B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, the guys that landed Helaitin at 7:40 in the morning, they put in five landing craft.
(40:45):
When he was getting dusk, they said, we'll make an amphibious assault straight on Tanenbogo.
Well, one of the airplanes, Cass, came in and hit a fuel dump there and just lit the place up.
So these guys were lit up when they came in and the Japanese just pounded them with machine gun fire and turned them back.
So they, that amphibious assault was turned back.
(41:06):
So at the end of the day, on the end of the 7th, Gavutu was in Marine hands after heavy casualties.
I'm trying to think, I mean, I'm trying to think how many of the parachute they lost.
They lost quite a bit of guys.
I forgot.
Let me find it.
Yeah, they had 30 killed and 54 wounded.
Now you got to remember the parachute battalion was only, I want to say about 400 guys.
(41:28):
They weren't full.
They were half the strength of an infantry battalion.
Yeah, they're about, I think 400 that landed.
So initially they said one out of, you know, they lost 50.
That was the reports coming into the division.
And 50 casualties, or 6% casualties, about one every 10 they reckon was hit, suffer casualty.
So they've such a waste of some good infantry or good Marines.
(41:52):
But they took it.
And then end of the day they still got Tannenbago on the tape.
So that puts us up the next morning to Tannenbogo.
So yeah.
What was the plan then to seize Tanambogo?
Well, at this stage the second Marines hadn't got back in their boats and headed to Santa Cruz Islands because Van Griff appealed to putting appeal.
(42:13):
He just told flat out through reporters during contact.
He told reporters, he goes, look, your purse says I need more troops.
I don't have any troops to take Tannenboa.
It's more heavy resistance than we thought.
So Vandergrift then went to Turner, the amphibious force commander, and said, we need the 2nd Marines to help us.
Okay.
So they released the 3rd Battalion, the 2nd Marines, to assist in the taking of Tannenburga.
(42:39):
So the plan was they used a parachute battalion to provide supporting fire from Gavutu because they had 148 in their possession.
One company was going to be on the causeway and another company was going to land amphibious assault supported by two light tanks, M3 tanks in the 2nd tank battalion.
That was the plan.
They were going to proceed with cast support.
(43:01):
That takes me back too.
I'll talk about some of the close air support on the first day that was happening because this is very important.
When they were taking Hill 148, they called for air support and two airplane, two Dauntless bombers came in and dropped two bombs two separate times and killed a number of marines.
They killed four marines.
And from then on they said no more air support because it's just too small of an island and we can't risk it.
(43:25):
So from then on there's no more air support.
There was some naval gun support for anything, a destroyer.
So that was the plan.
So the next day the base of fire came from Gavutu Stray on Tan and Bogo.
They, they landed, the two tanks came in, one went left, one went right.
It kind of channelized them because if you look at the photos at the time, the naval bombardment had hit some of the warehouses and there was just stuff everywhere.
(43:48):
So they had to go through drums and cranes and broken equipment and they overran their infantry.
Outran the infantry, not overran, they outran their infantry support.
And they got to the base of Hill 121 and a lot of these Japanese, like I said before, the construction workers, they weren't armed.
So they came out with knives and picks and sticks and spears or whatever they can.
(44:10):
At one tank commanded by Lieutenant Sweeney had went close to 1, 2, 1.
They said about the eyewitness accounts that 30 to 40 Japanese come straight out of the hill and surrounded with mossed off cocktails and sticks.
And they killed Sweeney with a rifle shot.
And then they would start dragging the crewmen out, burning the tank, dragging one crewman out and they cut him up and beat him up.
(44:34):
He actually lived.
He played dead, he lived tail to tell.
Quite a heroin account if you read it.
The driver managed to put it in reverse and get out because it was stuck on a stump.
Initially that's what caused the Japanese to run out.
And he made it back to the medical.
The other tank had provided fire as best as it could, but then it pulled back too.
(44:56):
By that stage, one company, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines had charged across the causeway and established a foothold in junction to the other company had landed and both of those companies swept through and they basically took out the island.
And what they were doing on Tulagi were using some of the innovative tactics like pouring gasoline in caves and using demolition charges.
(45:21):
They were doing the same on both of these islands too, especially develop in Tamboga.
They were sealing them in the caves.
They'd just hear them down in a cage and just blow the cave entrance like you've seen later.
Some of the later campaigns like Iwo Jimin and Kalaloo, they just seen them in there.
And to this day there's some Japanese still there sealed in those caves.
Think the Japanese come and try to cover them as best they could.
(45:42):
But yeah, they still remains there.
So some very tough fighting.
And as you said, we're seeing the Japanese what their way of fighting on the defense.
And it's in many respects just as harrowing as their offensive capabilities, isn't it?
Yes, because once again you've got to literally kill them, kill every one of them to get them out of there.
(46:04):
And they're not.
And they can be sick and wounded and.
Or like we've seen here, they could just be civilians and construction workers with no training.
Doesn't take much training to I think our patents and or pull a trigger on a machine gun.
So you have to do.
And if you're not going to surrender and.
And then in those days the Marines didn't have the blows, torch and corkscrew techniques they developed later in the war.
(46:27):
And we talk about in January 43, we get to that point, we talk about when the Marines are starting to use some of them with innovative.
But they've had to come up with a lot of innovative techniques and think off the fly and off the cuff what's going to work.
Fire seem to be the biggest way to get them out.
But once again, how do you gonna.
You don't have flamethrowers.
They didn't come around until January 15th on Guadalcanal.
(46:48):
So pull fuel down there and try to blast them out as best you can and put TNT blocks.
They were doing that putting TNT blocks and fuel drums rolling up to cave entries and just blasting them, just using what they know.
Once again though, we're seeing the use of artillery.
So even in this first it's a really comprehensive approach to combined arms which many of the armies that we've been looking at in the way that they've been fighting the Japanese.
(47:15):
And so at this time we've got the Kokoda campaign about to start and yet the Australian troops would be fighting without air cover, without any artillery until almost the end or the peak of the Japanese advance.
And so a much more well rounded approach towards combined arms which significantly makes things a lot better.
(47:40):
And we'll see a lot more about the artillery when we move across the Guadal Canal, won't we?
Yes, yes.
And I was speaking to an Australian historian and he was mentioning the biggest thing, I guess difference between especially Kokoda popo campaign and Guadalcanal is artillery.
Artillery was real, made the big force multiply and the Marines had a lot of artillery.
(48:02):
They brought a lot of artillery with them and they.
And you will say when we hit Guadalcanal, they had one battery up and firing within four hours after landing over 75 pack power.
Yeah.
The point about artillery on the Kokoda campaign is very interesting because if you.
The Japanese had artillery and they put a significant amount of their logistics effort and the Kokoda campaign was a logistics campaign, but because of the difficulties in just getting everything forward to where the fighting was, they put a significant amount of effort into moving guns and artillery ammunition.
(48:37):
So they were able to outrange the Australian troops often, which would have been quite demoralizing.
Yeah, I've got some tributes here for the Landlong Tilaj surrounding islands for the merits they all up there, 145 killed, 194 wounded.
The Japanese that lost.
I think they had 15 prisoners on Gavutu and Tanabogo, three on Tulagi.
(49:01):
That's 70.
This approximately 70.
As you know, these figures are not dead on that has swam escaped to the nearby Florida islands and the 2nd Marines.
And some of the writers spent for the next weeks and months chasing these guys in the Florida islands.
So there was.
There was a taste of what was the respect is going to be in the heavy fighting that's going to be coming.
(49:25):
Yep, we'll leave it there.
We'll return next week with our look at the landings on Guadalcanal.
And keep an eye out for Dave's book, Guadalcanal's Longest Fight the Pivotal Battles of the Matanikau Front.
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(49:55):
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How did the United States commence their first land offensive, littoral maneuver, no less, in the Second World War.
We look at US Marines on Tulagi 1942, the forgotten first US offensive of the Second World War.
This is the Principles of War podcast, professional military education for junior officers and senior NCOs.
(00:28):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast.
Very excited to have Dave Holland back with us.
Today we are continuing our Guadalcanal Campaign series.
Dave is a battlefield guide with extensive experience around Guadalcanal.
He's got encyclopedic knowledge of the Guadalcanal land campaign and he is the author of Guadalcanal's Longest Fight.
(00:53):
Today we're talking about Tulagi, Tanambogo and Gavutu Islands.
Let's get back to the discussion.
The Marines first combat landing of the Second World War.
Welcome back to the podcast, Dave.
Thanks, James.
It's great to be back and I'm ready for episode two.
So now we're actually getting into some fighting, so.
(01:13):
Absolutely.
So we're going to look at Tulagi.
The Marines left Wellington on 22 July 1942.
That's the same day as the Japanese landing at Buna and Gona.
The task force was to conduct landings on five islands, Florida, Gavutu, Tanambogo, Tulagi and Guadalcanal.
How well prepared were they when they left Wellington?
(01:37):
Okay, I think it goes back to the last episode when I was talking about the, I guess composition and the training and the experience or non experience of the division.
I think I said in the last episode they're fairly green factor.
I'd say 70%, 80% of the division was very green.
And so their planning was three to four weeks or I think extended out to at least the seventh.
(01:57):
From the first they got a reprieve for another week.
King gave them another week for the seventh.
So the plan was only five weeks.
So Operation Watch Time became Operation Shoestring, which was the joke at the time.
It was a shoestring invasion.
So I guess as you could say in five weeks, launching the largest US amphibious assault in their history.
(02:19):
At that stage it's probably the best they could be within five weeks training and five week preparation.
So they weren't that well prepared.
But they had to do what they had to do, had to make the best of a bad situation.
Luckily, I think I spoke about in the last episode, they had some good quality officers and some good NCOs, and they had a high quality of the green recruits.
(02:39):
I think I said too also that of these recruits, one also said they're all officer.
If they were in peacetime, they'd be officer caliber because of volunteers.
And these are the bunch that came straight out of the Pearl Harbors.
They're very well motivated.
They were keen to take on the Japanese and they're very motivated and dedicated, so to speak.
Ready to go.
Now on the way to Guadalcanal, they stopped at Coro island in Fiji for two rehearsal landings.
(03:05):
How did they go?
Well, think it's kind of common knowledge.
That was a fiasco, a complete fiasco.
That was what Lt. Col. Merrill Trining, one of the Division Klan officers, said it was a complete fiasco.
But in a lot of books and a lot of accounts they just write it off as nothing was learned.
But there was some valuable lessons learned from this.
I guess some of the things that they dubbed it to be a complete fiasco.
(03:29):
The reasons were law.
The boats were hung up on the coral.
So Cairo is about 400 miles south of Fiji.
That was the rendezvous place.
And there was also the rendezvous for, or the meeting place for the whole fleet.
So you had Admiral Fletcher and Admiral Kerner and the transport units.
He had them all meeting at one stage.
This is the first time that the three elements were meeting all together so that it was also a chance to do rehearsals.
(03:54):
Also a chance to have the actual first conference with the tactical commander, which is Admiral Fletcher at the time.
So we'll talk about that in a second.
But when they actually did the dress rehearsals, a lot of the boats were hung up on coral.
They landed like one or 200 yards off.
They swamped a lot of boats, ran into their own beaches, landed on their own beaches.
(04:14):
Some of the guys going down the ladders and the ropes got hung up.
Equipment fell in the ocean.
Yeah, it was a complete fiasco.
But things they, I guess cons, you could say it was the first time for a lot of the smaller units that have meetings.
So they coordinated a lot of stuff.
Some of the air and the naval coordinated the timings with the firing and how they work together.
(04:38):
The boat timings were worked out.
It allowed them a chance to repack and continue packing some of their gear.
Because as you know, we discussed in last episode, when they landed in New Zealand under Operation Longville for the six month deployment there, they're all admin packed in the cargo ships.
So they had to do a rush repack the best they could to combat load those ships.
(05:01):
So it gave him a chance to continue that combat loading.
So there was some lessons learned from it and some good things from it.
But overall it didn't fill them with optimism.
Now the conference was on the 26th of July.
So that was Fletcher.
He was meeting with Turner who was the amphibious force commander.
Vander Griff was Division 1st Marine Division Commander and a guy called Admiral Rear Admiral Callahan.
(05:23):
So he was the chief of staff for Re or Vice Admiral Gormley.
It was a South Pacific commander.
Interestingly Gormley didn't attend.
He was still back in this stage.
I think he'd moved his headquarters to New Caledonia I think at that stage, or potentially New Zealand.
But it was one of those two PR I think it far deployed to New Caledonia.
But he wasn't there.
(05:44):
So Fletcher wasn't really convinced about the invasion.
He what Vandergriff said that Fletcher had the he was opinion that Fletcher thought of it more of a raid, amphibious raid, in and out, not of we're going to go there and stay.
Obviously he had three carriers and he was very protective of his carriers.
So the debate was how long was the air cover going to remain to unload the transports and cargo ships.
(06:08):
So it's a big controversy even today.
So Fletcher says I'll give you D plus one.
So D day, landing day plus one.
So two days of air coverage.
Then I'm out of there.
Because he didn't want to keep his carriers on station in a stationary position because they're susceptible to especially land based bombers and he wanted to keep them on the move.
(06:28):
So Turner and Vande Griff wasn't keen or wasn't happy with that idea.
They said was no way they were spent at least four to five days to unload those cargoes and transports.
I mean download a transport ship's not you got men on it, you can unload them quite quickly but all the cargo is going to take a number of days.
So they said look, four to five days.
Fletcher goes and went back and forth.
Finally Fletcher said okay, I'll give you D plus two.
(06:50):
So three days and that's it, I'm out of there on the 9th of August.
I'm out of there now.
Callahan, who is supposed to be Gormley's representative, didn't say a word.
He might, he was just kind of acting as the scribe.
He wrote notes down.
So if Gormley would have been there, at least he would have been, I guess the person who could mediate it and made the final decision.
But he wasn't there.
(07:10):
And that's a big controversy.
And so they left the conference.
Vandergrift and Turner wasn't too happy because they said, we only got three days.
Fletcher wasn't really happy because I don't think he really wanted to command the expedition to start with.
So what Turner had come up with, he said, this is our plan.
It's going to take us at least four to five days to unload these cargo ships.
So.
So we have a covering force of cruisers, heavy cruisers, and some destroyers under a guy called Admiral Crutchley, who was a British admiral, actually.
(07:38):
Victoria Cross, had been awarded a Victoria Cross, I think, in the First World War.
So he was on loan to the Australian Navy he commanded.
His flagship was the hmas.
I said HMS once and someone.
Someone basically flogged me on the.
On the podcast I was on or I think on Facebook, HMAs get my accent right.
(07:59):
Australia and also the Camber there.
And I think there was a cruiser I can't think off top of my head, you might know it, but there was three Australian ships involved.
So they're part of the covering force.
And what they were going to do is he was going to use those covering force of heavy cruisers and some destroyer pickets, and then they were going to provide protection to the cargo ships get offloaded.
(08:19):
This becomes very important a bit later on when we get to talk about the Battle of Sabo Island.
This really comes into.
Into very important there.
So, yeah, so that was the plan.
And after that, they proceeded on to do the invasion.
And at this stage, most of the Marines didn't know they were going to invade Guadalcanal.
I think it was actually right before Coral or at Coro that most of the Marines were just learned, okay, invasion is Guadalcanal.
(08:45):
Even though there's.
You read some accounts or hear some accounts that it was already known.
But generally when you read most of the, I think the enlisted men in the private soldiers accounts or Marines accounts, they didn't know where they were going.
They just knew they were going into combat.
In fact, the COVID story.
No, I'll take it back.
The COVID story the division came up with the troops was, oh, we're packing very quickly.
(09:08):
We're going to go do some exercises and some training.
But some of the old NCOs and some of the officers started realizing when the live ammunition started coming out, yeah, we're not going to do training, we're going into combat somewhere.
So that was the coverage story when they left.
So after the Koro was finished conference, when they started heading basically north the word got out.
(09:30):
Maps, well, not maps, rudimentary maps and have good maps came out.
We're going everybody canal.
And it started working out the plans.
So leading the landing at Tulagi was Brigadier General William Rupertis.
And he's second in command under Major General Alexander Vandegrift.
What was Rupertus like?
Yeah, so sir Pertus, sometimes Rupertus was man Rupertus.
(09:52):
So Mariam Rupertus was a career Marine.
Initially he came in.
I think it was a Revenue service.
But what's modern called Modern today the Coast Guard and for medical Regency.
He didn't make it to academy, so he received a commission in Marine Corps.
So he was an excellent marksman, competition shooter.
He actually, he was the author the.
(10:13):
The Marines.
Well, all Marines know it's called the Roffman's Creed.
There are many rifles, but this one was mine.
And we.
Well, Marines still say it to this day in boot camp.
But yeah, he was.
He was known as a.
A great staff officer.
Very smart fellow.
I think he graduated number one in his class.
He'd served in a quote, banana wars, but I think he's more administrative.
Top roles in Haiti.
(10:35):
And then he.
He served in the China.
It was a part of China Marines commander battalion in the 4th Marines, which is 4th Marine Regiment in China.
So he was 37, 38.
Around that time he had an opportunity to observe the Chinese because as you know, they were.
That was when the Sino Japanese war was kicking off for the second time.
So he was in Shanghai.
(10:56):
He got to observe.
I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, I think they were.
But anyway, he got to observe the.
These future enemies and how they fall.
So he was the.
The visions Assistant division commander.
So he was friends with Vandergrift, the division commander.
And he later became very controversial because he was the first Marine division commander to Bala Peleli.
(11:17):
And that's where he.
There's a lot of controversy around that battle and he was the division commander there.
So a lot of controversy follows Robertus.
In my opinion.
Robertus was a great staff officer.
He wasn't really known to be a frontline combat officer, say like a Puller or Edson or even a Vandergriff.
He wasn't very personable.
He didn't like to visit the guys on the.
On the lines and things like that.
(11:39):
But I think his.
He's shown in his planning and his staff officer capability.
He's very smart planner.
So in this.
In this battle, I think we'll get to it a bit later.
But they divided the forces in the into two forces, one under reporters and one under Vandergriel.
So Vandergrift had task force X ray and they went to Guadalcanal and repertoires had task force Yoke X Y and they speared north to go to Tulagi and the surrounding islands.
(12:09):
So it was basically two separate battles unsupported, fought at the same time.
So what's the terrain like in Tulagi?
Well see Tulagi was the, was the British pre war colonial capital.
So the Bruce Solomon Islands I think from 1896 was a British protectorate.
So they administered and ran the whole Solomon Islands.
(12:31):
So they established their headquarters on Tulagi.
Now the reason they did that tag is nice little island.
It's basically free from some of the tropical diseases and away from the mainlands and the swamps and things like that.
It's a good place to establish.
Plus Tulagi harbor is one of the best deep water ports I've been told in the Pacific, but definitely in the South Pacific.
So it's a very strategic area.
(12:52):
So Tulagi is about 4,000 yards long, roughly about a thousand yards wide.
During the time of the battle most of it had been cleared because the British had established their headquarters there.
It's what you would think of a pre war British outpost.
It had a cricket oval, cricket pitch, had a nine hole golf course.
(13:13):
It had a giant country club, nice neat line streets with colonial administration buildings, had a prison, had a hospital.
So it's very well maintained area.
And most of the vegetation had been cut loose.
On the northern bit there's a mango swamp and that was probably the thickest part.
Running down the island was a, or still is.
(13:35):
What I keep saying was I was only there three weeks ago is a, a mountainous spine.
I won't say mountains, a hills, hill spine.
So the highest peak it ends at the northern or sorry the southern bit of the island on a hill called 281.
So it's 281ft.
That's what they designated as.
So that was where the highest point was 281.
But that's Hill spine ran the whole length toward the southern bit.
(13:58):
The British had cut a path about a normal road width through the ridge.
So they're allowed to one side to go from the government buildings to the living quarters.
So they call it the cut which when the battle of Tulagi comes of importance.
So that's what Tulagi was.
It was actually a very nice area.
(14:18):
It still is but it was super nice in 1942.
Yeah.
It's unusual being in the Solomons and seeing a cricket ground.
Yeah.
Cricket pitch.
Yes.
Yeah.
I've got Martin Clemens, who was the famous coast watcher.
I've got a photo from his private album and it shows.
It shows a Creek pitch in 1938 and looks just like you're in Australia somewhere.
(14:38):
And they.
I think when you were there, you've seen the actual.
The cricket pitch.
For American listeners, that's like at the.
The concrete long.
Are you explaining, James, what.
How would you explain a cricket pitch?
What is that?
It's the.
The oval is an oval shape.
That's the playing ground where you play the cricket.
And there's a pitch where the bowling and the batting happens.
So that's where most of the action occurs.
(15:00):
And so if someone bowls a ball and the batsman at the other end tries to hit it as far and as fast as he can, and then they.
In between the wickets.
How long do you think a pitch is?
10, 15 meters?
I think.
Not sure.
But, yeah, it's not a huge distance.
Yeah.
And this one was made of concrete.
It's still there, as you know.
Anyway, that's.
That's all we got.
(15:20):
Tulagi Loop so the first landing of the Guadalcanal campaign, and so this is the commencement of US land offensive for the Second World War, was at Tulagi.
How did that landing go?
Actually, it was at Hale, which is a few hundred yards from Tulagi.
That's one of the things.
And a lot of people forget or don't even realize the 2nd Marines.
(15:41):
So when I say 2nd Marines and the Marines, Marine Corps, they say they pronounce their regiments by Marines, like 1st Marines, 2nd Marines, 3rd Marines.
That means regiment.
So they want to say Division is 1st Marine Division.
Sometimes that's confusing to people.
So the 2nd Marines was part of Task Force Yoke, and they were going to be a reserve force only because Turner had wanted to use them reserved.
(16:04):
And after the landings, he was going to take the whole regiment and send them to a place called Nandini, which is in Santa Cruz Island.
So that's between Espirito Santos and Guadalcanal.
They were going to grab Nadini.
So N D E N I N D. So that was the idea.
So I think we discussed on last episode how the 7th Marines, which is one of the third rifle regiments of the division, had been earmarked and sent previously in March.
(16:29):
Sorry, yeah.
In April.
Sorry, April.
May, in 42.
To Samoa.
So they're garrisoned Samoa.
So it left Vandergrift without a rifle regiment.
So he was down to two rifle regiments.
So the second Marines was on loan temporarily for this initial invasion.
Then they were going to shoot off in Benning.
So part of their job, B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, was the land to the west of Tulagi, about 500 yards in the Florida Islands, because Tulagi's you're only separated for like 4 or 500 yards from the Florida Islands, which is a large island group.
(17:03):
But on the tip overlooking the beach that the Marines were going to land on Tulagi was a small village called Haleta.
So they thought, well, if there's any Japanese Hale to they could pour enfilading fire straight on Blue beach, which is at Stilagi landed beach.
Therefore, 20 minutes earlier, we're going to land a company of marines on Haleta to secure that village to ensure the protect the left flank of the.
(17:28):
The raiders landed on Tulagi.
So at 0740 or 7.40am on the morning of the 7th of August, B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and a Captain Crane landed.
They were the first troops to land.
Now let's put an Australian spin on this.
I think I mentioned in a previous episode that when Lieutenant Colonel later Colonel G, the division intelligence officer, went to Australia, he spoke to a number of former planters and what colonial officials and things like that.
(17:57):
It lived there.
So he gathered intel.
So he incorporated about, I think eight or 12 of these as gods.
So one of the guides was a guy called always get this wrong.
Pilot officer, flying Officer.
I think it's flying officer.
I get my raw Australian ranks wrong sometimes.
Anyway, it just says Flying Officer C. Spencer.
Now, Spencer led those guys because Spencer lived on Tulagi for a number of years, so he knew there quite well.
(18:21):
So he led that those guys in.
Now, the first man to put his foot on the soil was an Australian, Spencer.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So I've got Spencer's unpublished memoirs.
Oh, sorry.
It was published in the Sydney papers, I think in the 40s and 50s.
But it needs to be a book.
But hopefully one day it will turn into a book.
It was into Australian War Memorial.
(18:41):
So, yeah, he was the first ones to land an Australian.
So they landed there unopposed, no one there.
They jumped back in the boats and headed back.
So they were the first troops to land the second Marines in the Guadalcanal campaign.
Now, 8 o', clock, the first Marine Raiders were picked to land.
They landed at Blue Beach.
Now, you may give you the reason why they landed At Blue Beach.
(19:05):
Yeah.
So they were looking for somewhere that was unopposed.
And their intelligence suggested that they would be more towards the southeast part of the island.
So they were looking for somewhere where they could.
And I think there was also a consideration around the amount of coral as well.
Yeah.
So Vanderger, his whole idea, he says, look, because of the plan and everything, he wanted to try to get a one up on the.
(19:27):
The Japanese because this was the first amphibious landing American had done since the Spanish American war in the late 8 or 1898.
So it was.
They said, we're going to hit them where they.
They don't expect us.
So in Tulagi, like you said, the southeast and southwest parts, the main landing beaches to the Japanese had.
Had put their defenses on the southern part of the island based around Hill 281.
(19:49):
So the planners pointed to this beach and they spoke to one of the former, the Australians who formerly lived there.
And they said, what about this beach?
Can we land there?
The Australian says, if you don't care about your boats, yeah, you can land there.
Because of the coral.
Vinegar says, yeah, we don't care about our boats.
Well, we don't.
We want to land where they don't expect us to be.
So, yeah, true to what the Australian said, when the Marines went in first rate of battalion, the boats grounded on a coral.
(20:16):
It didn't smash the boats up, it just grounded.
Most of them grounded on the coral about 100 yards off, but luckily for them is unopposed.
And they jumped out of the boats and waited ashore and they landed without a shot being fired.
They quickly started spreading out over the island.
I guess.
I think the really interesting thing with this is despite all of the difficulties in conducting amphibious operations, the one thing that you've got in your favor is the flexibility to choose the landing site.
(20:44):
And that's why, because amphibious operations tend to be quite successful initially in.
In making that landing.
Obviously there's examples like Dieppe which weren't successful, but it's the importance of the intelligence and to be able to land where the enemy isn't because it's difficult to, you know, depending on the.
(21:05):
On the objective, they had quite a few places where they could have landed.
Yeah.
And what they're expected to land.
And now think.
I don't know if I mentioned the last episode.
Vandergrift wanted to send the first Marine raiders in previously prior to do a reconnaissance and feverish reconnaissance.
Once again, this is the first invasion and the Navy planners hadn't that.
I think Twinning said They're still operating on 1907 blue book manual which is this is how we fought 1907.
(21:32):
And they said no, it's too dangerous to send recon in beforehand.
And I think I mentioned too that he wanted to do a not landing.
They go no, it's too dangerous.
They were more aware about their boats.
But yeah, they hit them where they're not.
And that was a good planning technique.
That was part of their tentative 1934 tentative landing manual is to use the intelligence and try to hit them whether or not or do amphibious fates to do demonstrations to pull them in.
(21:56):
And we'll see that a bit later in a campaign.
So what naval gunfire and air support did the troops have as they went ashore?
Okay, so there were three carriers like I mentioned before under Fletcher.
I think they were about 250 almost said yards.
Geez, that was a bit of a mess.
250 miles southeast.
So they provided all the CAS support or the close air support.
(22:19):
And then the naval support came from one cruiser which is a San Juan.
If you know about the cruisers they're calling the anti aircraft cruisers or the machine gun cruisers on plane but it's the USS San Juan which is a cruiser and two destroyers was the Monson and the Buchanan.
So they had three ships for close naval gunfire support.
(22:41):
Now the air strikes came initially early in the morning preceding the invasion.
There's some great photos out there of the taken on the day and it shows them striking Gavutu, Cano, Tulagi.
Some great photos from air shots.
It shows fires burning and docks burning and it screws some right good footage.
(23:06):
Now the Japanese on Tanabogo had a float plane bases.
We discussed last episode.
It differates you speak to some accounts have 12 other accounts have 15 float planes and the Japanese hadn't had flew the reconnaissance place.
And that was a kind of a benefit for the Americans because they came in under cover of weather that's allowed them to approach undetected because it the weather I think for the last two days had been pretty bad.
(23:32):
So allowed them to come in darkness around 2 something in or 2:30 in the morning.
They they came in and broke up into two separate X ray and yoke.
But the Japanese hadn't been flying any reconnaissance planes.
So early that morning.
I think that the weather had cleared and they were like revving their planes up and getting them ready to go.
And out of the sky come the Wildcats and shot them up and destroyed most of them I think destroyed all of them.
(23:59):
To this day, you can, I think you can dive two or three off Tulagi.
It's a great diving spot.
People dive on those things.
So it wiped out their air power off the bat on these strikes.
So they're very effective from the very beginning.
So how did the fight for Tulagi go?
Well, initially, when, like I said, when the marines landed.
So the first rate of Battalion went in first, followed by the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Rooms under Lt. Col. Rosecrans, now Vandegrift, because he expected a tough fight in Tulagi and the surrounding islands.
(24:27):
I say the surrounding islands up in Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanabogo.
So they picked the best units.
So first rated battalion, first Parachute battalion, second Battalion, fifth Marines.
So they're one of the best units ahead.
Infantry battalions.
So there were the three battalions or regimental sides they were going to hit with the 2nd Marines in reserve to assist.
(24:48):
So when the first raiders hit, their job was to land and turn to the right, which is south, and spread out over the island.
So 2 5.
When I say 25 at second time, 5th Marines came in behind them.
And then they turned left to clear out the northern end of the island.
So raiders come in, they spread out and they started moving down the island.
It brought one company one coast, the other company another coast, and two companies on that spine, that ridge spawn.
(25:14):
So they're moving down.
25 came in, turn left, cleared the left, the top of the island under no resistance.
Maybe a few sniper shots or rifle shots they call it, they said.
And then it wasn't until around midday that the marines started, got the first resistance because the Japanese had built all their resistance on round 281, which is on the far south in the island.
(25:36):
So the village called Sepia, there were a few, I think it was one machine gun, a few rifles there.
B Company got into a little bit of a brawl with.
But they managed to push through them quite quickly.
But C Company, they passed the hill called 201.
Now, 201 was the home of the police superintendent and the police barracks, they've been long gone.
(25:56):
They evacuated long before that.
So the Japanese had a couple machine gun posts up there, and that's a barbed wire over the road.
So C Company, under a guy called Major Ken Bailey, pushed past Hill 201.
And they started receiving fire from the rear.
So they had to.
They were pinned down for a short time and then had the assault and take those two machine gun posts out.
(26:21):
Now Bailey in the process of taking him out, the company commander, he's up one of the bunkers pulling sandbags out.
They're trying to throw grenades in this thing.
He got shot in the thigh, but he continued on.
And Bailey's gonna, we're going to speak about Bailey later in the campaign, but.
And then he was wounded and he was sent back to New Caledonia to hospital.
And there he gave talks to the army there.
(26:43):
But yeah, just keep Ken Bailey in your back of your mind because he later.
But he was, I think he's like six foot three, bigger than life, a very aggressive commander now.
I loved him.
So anyway, they continued on after that resistance.
They made it almost to the, it was getting dark.
Then they made it to the cricket oval and they made it to the cut when I mentioned earlier, the cut which is, which ran through the line, the thing that was their objective line.
(27:08):
As you know, mainly objective lines are based on geographical features so people can easily recognize it.
I mean not everyone's been carrying a map with a little line on it and they go, the objective line is this stream or this ridge or into the ridge or whatever.
So they reach the objective line by the evening.
So what they're planning on doing was going to dig in, establish a strong perimeter.
(27:29):
Then next day they were going to clear out the rest of the island.
So that's where they were on the night of the 7th and the 8th.
So the Japanese, you had roughly about 3 to 350, depends on which account you read of Japanese there.
And there was Special Naval Landing Force, this from the third Korea.
Special Naval Landing Force at that stage, I think they've been redesignated the 81st or in the 84th guard unit.
(27:54):
But they were Japanese Naval infantry.
You know, contrary to what you read, they weren't the most elite.
They weren't Japanese Marines as, like the US Marines, Royal Marines were known as.
They weren't as well trained as Imperial Japanese army.
But they just have this mystique about them that they're they were the best.
Mostly late Japanese.
They were well trained, don't get me wrong and Bitch is a reservist un.
(28:16):
I think the average age is in the 30s and 35 for these guys.
I mean there's a great photo, it shows the third courier and their NCOs and officers and they look some pretty well competent and well determined men.
But anyway, they were no business the surrender and they were fighting quite hard.
So that night they launched five.
I don't like to use Bonsai attacks.
It wasn't bonsai.
(28:36):
They're mainly the part of their Japanese doctrine for infiltration.
So five assaults against the Marines that cut one of the platoons of C Company off at the most of the attacks were beaten back quite easily.
They lost a lot of the guys.
So the next day, 2, 5 it came in and the plan was to reduce the Japanese.
At this stage they were in a pocket on 281.
(28:59):
So they had some hills and sorry, they had some caves and some sandbag positions at the bottom of the cricket oval and the cricket pitch, that area.
I think a lot of these caves wasn't machine gun made, machine gun bunkers because they didn't really expect an invasion from my reading.
And just my theory is I think a lot of these were air race shelters dug into the hill and they just threw sandbags or rocks and use them as barriers and they just became instant bunkers, machine gun bunkers.
(29:29):
So the fight was on for there and that had to get these guys out of this little ravine.
Now this is the days before they had Marines had bazookas or flamethrowers and they had to use a lot of emperor improvisation.
They adapted.
One of the ways they adapted was they were using the TNT charges, central charges and TNT blocks of tnt.
(29:49):
Then we're tying them onto ropes.
They would like get above the Japanese and just swing the TNT block over the entrance and try to blast them that way.
They're putting them on plywood, pieces of like plywood with long sticks or and just blast them in like that way.
Some of them are actually putting on ropes.
Like one of the famous gunnery sergeant who's a demolition specialist, Angus Goss, he was doing a rope.
(30:13):
He just, I wouldn't say ab sale when those absent in those days just put a rope around your waist and go down the thing.
And he was throwing demolition charges in.
At one stage in the cut, there was a small Japanese hole there with air raised shelter and it's roughly about 30, 40 Japanese in there and had a machine gun and a sandbag.
You can imagine both sides, the cuts.
The Marines were on both ends trying to fire and you know you had crossfire and they couldn't get into that cut.
(30:38):
So one of the Marines come up with a solution.
He says, he said there's a 50 gallon gasoline drums down by the government dock.
So they wrote a couple of those 50 gallon or 44 liters talking Australian up to the top and they poured the fuel down and they burned the Japanese out.
And then when they ran out, they'd shoot them that way.
So we use a lot of improvised techniques to make it happen.
(30:59):
So by the end of the second day, which is the eighth most resistance was completed and the island was secured, even though a number of days later they had stragglers or snipers still in caves that they were trying to clean up.
But being the second day on Tulagi, the island was secured by Repertos, declared secured.
They actually tried to bring two tanks in at one stage because the 2nd Marines had a company of tanks with them.
(31:24):
The 2nd Marine Battalions.
These are the M3 tanks.
This is on Tulagi now.
And they brought two in to assist, but one had mechanical breakdown and the other one got stuck or bogged, so they wasn't involved.
Then we talk about 10 and Bogo, they had two tanks and they were involved.
And we'll talk about that in a minute.
So, yeah, that was the fight on Tulagi.
Now all the Japanese were killed except for three.
(31:47):
And about.
Well, not about 45 marines were killed fighting for that island.
So this is the first time that the Americans or their allies that seen the Japanese fight defensively in caves and bunkers, and they knew we had to kill every one of them.
That's why they said we had to kill every one of them to get them out.
We had to go in there and kill them to get them out.
(32:09):
This was the first real encounter of the Japanese in the defensive that was going to be seen throughout the Pacific.
This is.
Is the first time that we're coming face to face with these heavy encounters.
The Japanese are pride themselves on offensive doctrine, but they ended up to be defensive geniuses.
One of the things that I find really interesting is despite this being the first amphibious operation for the Marines of the war, they've got their tanks available to them.
(32:36):
So probably a much more advanced concept of combined arms straight out of the box than we've seen with some of the other armies trying to fight in the jungle.
Yeah, well, it goes back to that tentative landing doctrine I was discussing on the last episode.
And tanks were in the.
(32:56):
Just infancy with the infantry and, and learning the tank infantry tactics.
The Marines hadn't worked it out.
We'll see.
We talk about Tannenbogo in the first tank attack were unsupported by infantry and what could go wrong there?
There was a lot to be learned, but yeah, they had them there and they had a whole tank battalion with the division of M3s and had some M2s too, which is the only Time they were used in combat, but they had M3 Stuarts and M2s, light tanks.
(33:23):
So while we've got the landing going on at Tulagi, we've also got operations going on with Gavutu and Tanambogo.
Do you want to sort of talk us through what those two islands are like and you what the terrain's like?
Okay, well, we'll talk about what they were like beforehand or what how they became known and why the Japanese landed there.
I think I mentioned to in the last episode how the Australians were there at Tananbogo.
(33:47):
Did we mention that I think had a seaplane base?
Yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
So the Australians had a seaplane base.
Japanese took it over.
So Tanambogo was the main seaplane base and the Gavutu was used also.
So pre war, Gavutu was the headquarters of the Lever Brothers.
And the Lever Brothers, the big coconut plantation.
I think they're still in business.
I don't know.
But they were the coconut plantations that own business, that owned all the coconut plantations in the area.
(34:11):
So that was their main headquarters on Tulagi.
Oh, sorry.
Gavutu.
So Gavutu was clear.
There was no jungle there.
Had buildings.
Had their big store at headquarter buildings.
It was nice and clear.
Coconut trees on it.
It was a nice place, too.
Had their loading docks, big concrete piers, docks.
(34:32):
The Japanese had a seaplane, had their seaplane docks there and seaplane establishments.
So Gavutu is small.
I mean, both of them are very small.
They're basically just juts of Carl popping up out of the ocean.
So Gavutu is about 500 to 600 yards long.
About 300, 250, 300 yards wide.
(34:52):
So depends on where you measure it from.
Has one hill on it.
That's Hill 148.
And that's right there.
Now, Gavuku is separated by Tanenbogo, they separated by caswell.
There's about 300 yards between both islands.
So pre war, what the Australians have done and the Lieber brothers have done, they put a causeway there.
(35:14):
The causeway is about a roadside size width, 300 yards long.
They could go from island to drive vehicles back and forth and move material.
So there's a causeway.
You could just walk from one island to the other, about 300 yards long.
So that was separated by that.
And the causeway is built over just a coral ledge.
So Tanenbogo was even tinier.
(35:36):
So it's about 250 yards by 250 yards.
It was clear too.
And it had warehouses on it and cranes and all this stuff that involved in a safeline bikes.
And it had a one, it had a small hill called one two one, so 121ft.
So these two hills going to be very prevalent when the Marines try to land there because both those hills can support each other.
(35:56):
So we're only talking thousand yards apart, if that.
800 yards apart, these two heels to get 148, 121 and they separated by 800 yards.
So that's what the terrain looked like.
Very open, very built up actually with buildings.
So the seaplane base was at Gavutu and Tanambogo.
Gavutu was assaulted by the US Marine 1st Parachute Battalion at 1200.
(36:21):
This was after the landings at Guadalcanal and Tulagi because there wasn't enough air cover to support three landings at once.
How did the Gavutu landings go?
Yeah, so I probably say it in one sentence, but it was the first by the Americans in World War II.
So go back to those two hills.
The Americans expected to be about 200 Japanese on those islands.
(36:42):
It was, their intelligence said it was 1500 Japanese on all the Tulagan shrine and islands.
They roughly said, look, it's roughly 200, 250 on Tananburga in Gavutu.
The Japanese on Tannenbogovutu consisted of the Yokohama Air Group, which is the float planes which you talk about, the pilots, the air crews, the aircraft maintenance staff and things like that.
(37:07):
And then you had the 14th construction unit, mainly Koreans, laborers and some Japanese engineers and some Japanese civilians were in there too.
You had one platoon of Colt fighters and that was a special Naval Land enforcement platoon from Tulagi.
The rest of them were just support personnel.
There were about 500 to 600 of them there on both those islands.
(37:28):
But what they had was they wouldn't expect a direct amphibious assault.
They didn't have bunkers set up and pillboxes and barbed wire.
What they did have was a lot of anti aircraft weapons, machine guns because that was what they expected to get hit by.
Because Americans had been doing raids.
There's B17, especially on Guadalcanal.
So 1st Parachute Battalion obviously was an elite unit of the Marine Corps is a bit of debate.
(37:53):
But in my opinion there are.
They're better trained and a higher caliber than the raiders.
The first parachute majority of them were pre war regulars, especially the NCOs and officers.
And they had the peak of the NCOs and officers.
He had a very good unit.
So obviously they Wouldn't coming in by playing on this one, they're coming in by amphibious assault.
They didn't expect much resistance on Gavutu.
(38:16):
So what Vandergriff had planned to do with Gavutu, they're going to land on Gavutu, secure it and then potentially because they had a whole battalion or.
Sorry, yeah, whole battalion of artillery from the 10th Marines which is attached to the 2nd Marines, they're going to land at least a battery of 75 millimeters there and provide support to Tulagi.
This is only 3,000 yards from Tulagi.
(38:37):
So Gavutu and Tanabogo is 3,000 yards east of Tulagi.
So they were going to use that to support.
They didn't expect much resistance.
So the pre landing bombardments, the Marines had planned to land a seaplane dock, but when the carrier planes came in, it blasted that seaplane dock, threw concrete everywhere.
So that was off.
(38:58):
Off the sharks or off the table.
So they had to land at a small beach about 100 yards wide, if that.
Not even 100 yards at 50 yards wide to the left of the dock.
And plus they had the land at a big concrete loading dock.
That was pre war lever brothers.
So the first boats came in, they automatically started taking fire from both of those hills, inflated heavy machine gun fire and guys were, you know, killed and wounded in their boats before they even got out.
(39:27):
There was one interesting point, you remember I said about the float planes, how the carrier planes come and suck all the float planes, one marina countless when they're heading in.
One of the float planes was still floating, is in paces and sitting on the wing.
They said it was a pilot.
So I don't know how they knew it was a pilot.
But it's Jeff definitely a Japanese there with his pistol out firing at him is, you know, all these Marine landing craft were coming in with all these, you know, hundreds of marines coming in.
(39:54):
This one Japanese just defiantly firing his pistol and he didn't last long because the guy on the.
One of the landing craft had the Lewis gun and he cut him down.
But just the defiance of that Japanese.
But anyway they came in, started getting hit and then they were almost getting pushed back.
So they managed to land a couple of machine guns.
They started throwing fire on 148 and they started had enough suppressing fire so they could land more guys on there.
(40:19):
They're taking heavy casualties.
The battalion commander was hit, wasn't killed, but he was mortar or knocked out, very seriously wounded.
They managed by the end of the day to take Hill 148 with a lot of casualties.
And then at the end of the day, Tannen Bogo was still in Japanese hands.
And when he was getting dusk, they made a decision that B Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, the guys that landed Helaitin at 7:40 in the morning, they put in five landing craft.
(40:45):
When he was getting dusk, they said, we'll make an amphibious assault straight on Tanenbogo.
Well, one of the airplanes, Cass, came in and hit a fuel dump there and just lit the place up.
So these guys were lit up when they came in and the Japanese just pounded them with machine gun fire and turned them back.
So they, that amphibious assault was turned back.
(41:06):
So at the end of the day, on the end of the 7th, Gavutu was in Marine hands after heavy casualties.
I'm trying to think, I mean, I'm trying to think how many of the parachute they lost.
They lost quite a bit of guys.
I forgot.
Let me find it.
Yeah, they had 30 killed and 54 wounded.
Now you got to remember the parachute battalion was only, I want to say about 400 guys.
(41:28):
They weren't full.
They were half the strength of an infantry battalion.
Yeah, they're about, I think 400 that landed.
So initially they said one out of, you know, they lost 50.
That was the reports coming into the division.
And 50 casualties, or 6% casualties, about one every 10 they reckon was hit, suffer casualty.
So they've such a waste of some good infantry or good Marines.
(41:52):
But they took it.
And then end of the day they still got Tannenbago on the tape.
So that puts us up the next morning to Tannenbogo.
So yeah.
What was the plan then to seize Tanambogo?
Well, at this stage the second Marines hadn't got back in their boats and headed to Santa Cruz Islands because Van Griff appealed to putting appeal.
(42:13):
He just told flat out through reporters during contact.
He told reporters, he goes, look, your purse says I need more troops.
I don't have any troops to take Tannenboa.
It's more heavy resistance than we thought.
So Vandergrift then went to Turner, the amphibious force commander, and said, we need the 2nd Marines to help us.
Okay.
So they released the 3rd Battalion, the 2nd Marines, to assist in the taking of Tannenburga.
(42:39):
So the plan was they used a parachute battalion to provide supporting fire from Gavutu because they had 148 in their possession.
One company was going to be on the causeway and another company was going to land amphibious assault supported by two light tanks, M3 tanks in the 2nd tank battalion.
That was the plan.
They were going to proceed with cast support.
(43:01):
That takes me back too.
I'll talk about some of the close air support on the first day that was happening because this is very important.
When they were taking Hill 148, they called for air support and two airplane, two Dauntless bombers came in and dropped two bombs two separate times and killed a number of marines.
They killed four marines.
And from then on they said no more air support because it's just too small of an island and we can't risk it.
(43:25):
So from then on there's no more air support.
There was some naval gun support for anything, a destroyer.
So that was the plan.
So the next day the base of fire came from Gavutu Stray on Tan and Bogo.
They, they landed, the two tanks came in, one went left, one went right.
It kind of channelized them because if you look at the photos at the time, the naval bombardment had hit some of the warehouses and there was just stuff everywhere.
(43:48):
So they had to go through drums and cranes and broken equipment and they overran their infantry.
Outran the infantry, not overran, they outran their infantry support.
And they got to the base of Hill 121 and a lot of these Japanese, like I said before, the construction workers, they weren't armed.
So they came out with knives and picks and sticks and spears or whatever they can.
(44:10):
At one tank commanded by Lieutenant Sweeney had went close to 1, 2, 1.
They said about the eyewitness accounts that 30 to 40 Japanese come straight out of the hill and surrounded with mossed off cocktails and sticks.
And they killed Sweeney with a rifle shot.
And then they would start dragging the crewmen out, burning the tank, dragging one crewman out and they cut him up and beat him up.
(44:34):
He actually lived.
He played dead, he lived tail to tell.
Quite a heroin account if you read it.
The driver managed to put it in reverse and get out because it was stuck on a stump.
Initially that's what caused the Japanese to run out.
And he made it back to the medical.
The other tank had provided fire as best as it could, but then it pulled back too.
(44:56):
By that stage, one company, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines had charged across the causeway and established a foothold in junction to the other company had landed and both of those companies swept through and they basically took out the island.
And what they were doing on Tulagi were using some of the innovative tactics like pouring gasoline in caves and using demolition charges.
(45:21):
They were doing the same on both of these islands too, especially develop in Tamboga.
They were sealing them in the caves.
They'd just hear them down in a cage and just blow the cave entrance like you've seen later.
Some of the later campaigns like Iwo Jimin and Kalaloo, they just seen them in there.
And to this day there's some Japanese still there sealed in those caves.
Think the Japanese come and try to cover them as best they could.
(45:42):
But yeah, they still remains there.
So some very tough fighting.
And as you said, we're seeing the Japanese what their way of fighting on the defense.
And it's in many respects just as harrowing as their offensive capabilities, isn't it?
Yes, because once again you've got to literally kill them, kill every one of them to get them out of there.
(46:04):
And they're not.
And they can be sick and wounded and.
Or like we've seen here, they could just be civilians and construction workers with no training.
Doesn't take much training to I think our patents and or pull a trigger on a machine gun.
So you have to do.
And if you're not going to surrender and.
And then in those days the Marines didn't have the blows, torch and corkscrew techniques they developed later in the war.
(46:27):
And we talk about in January 43, we get to that point, we talk about when the Marines are starting to use some of them with innovative.
But they've had to come up with a lot of innovative techniques and think off the fly and off the cuff what's going to work.
Fire seem to be the biggest way to get them out.
But once again, how do you gonna.
You don't have flamethrowers.
They didn't come around until January 15th on Guadalcanal.
(46:48):
So pull fuel down there and try to blast them out as best you can and put TNT blocks.
They were doing that putting TNT blocks and fuel drums rolling up to cave entries and just blasting them, just using what they know.
Once again though, we're seeing the use of artillery.
So even in this first it's a really comprehensive approach to combined arms which many of the armies that we've been looking at in the way that they've been fighting the Japanese.
(47:15):
And so at this time we've got the Kokoda campaign about to start and yet the Australian troops would be fighting without air cover, without any artillery until almost the end or the peak of the Japanese advance.
And so a much more well rounded approach towards combined arms which significantly makes things a lot better.
(47:40):
And we'll see a lot more about the artillery when we move across the Guadal Canal, won't we?
Yes, yes.
And I was speaking to an Australian historian and he was mentioning the biggest thing, I guess difference between especially Kokoda popo campaign and Guadalcanal is artillery.
Artillery was real, made the big force multiply and the Marines had a lot of artillery.
(48:02):
They brought a lot of artillery with them and they.
And you will say when we hit Guadalcanal, they had one battery up and firing within four hours after landing over 75 pack power.
Yeah.
The point about artillery on the Kokoda campaign is very interesting because if you.
The Japanese had artillery and they put a significant amount of their logistics effort and the Kokoda campaign was a logistics campaign, but because of the difficulties in just getting everything forward to where the fighting was, they put a significant amount of effort into moving guns and artillery ammunition.
(48:37):
So they were able to outrange the Australian troops often, which would have been quite demoralizing.
Yeah, I've got some tributes here for the Landlong Tilaj surrounding islands for the merits they all up there, 145 killed, 194 wounded.
The Japanese that lost.
I think they had 15 prisoners on Gavutu and Tanabogo, three on Tulagi.
(49:01):
That's 70.
This approximately 70.
As you know, these figures are not dead on that has swam escaped to the nearby Florida islands and the 2nd Marines.
And some of the writers spent for the next weeks and months chasing these guys in the Florida islands.
So there was.
There was a taste of what was the respect is going to be in the heavy fighting that's going to be coming.
(49:25):
Yep, we'll leave it there.
We'll return next week with our look at the landings on Guadalcanal.
And keep an eye out for Dave's book, Guadalcanal's Longest Fight the Pivotal Battles of the Matanikau Front.
The Principles of War podcast is brought to you by James Ealing.
The show notes for the Principles of War podcast are available at www.theprinciplesofwar.com for maps, photos and other information that didn't make it into the podcast.
(49:55):
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